It really felt like an office lady being recruited into a company in the middle of her career. The members of the Palace Knights welcomed Aira easily enough, and Diablo was the only one still scowling. Utata, the Grasswalker girl, keenly noticed that and questioned him.
“Oh, you there. Displeased, are you? Having a former enemy commander guide us through their castle is all sorts of comfy, isn’t it?”
“...It is convenient, yes.”
Having a door that takes you everywhere and a guide to go with it...
“What’s making you so prickly, then?” Utata asked.
Although he knew she wouldn’t understand, Diablo replied.
“...We’ve got a new dungeon to explore, but it’s like reading the strategy guide about it before we even go in. It’s boring.”
“I’ve got, like, no clue what you’re talking about~” Utata said flippantly.
“Hmph. Mere mortals couldn’t hope to understand the thoughts of a Demon Lord,” Diablo retorted proudly.
Of course she wouldn’t get it. This was a matter of personal preference. Diablo did look through message boards and walkthrough sites and use the knowledge and impressions of other players. But he believed that a dungeon’s first run ought to be a blind one, if only for the sake of fun.
—There’s nothing like tackling the new event early and being the first to beat it without any cheating or walkthroughs! That’s the gaming addict’s way!
Of course, Diablo did understand the situation and realized he couldn’t approach this like a game. The lives of many hinged on their success. He couldn’t prioritize having fun here. It would be the kind of irrational argument that would get him chewed out in public.
—Still, emotion and personal taste aren’t influenced by rationality or weighing risks and benefits!
Diablo knew that moving purely on emotion was a problem in and of itself. But fun, both in games and outside of them, came from a balance of challenge and reward. The less challenging a game was, the more it became a chore, its enjoyability decreased, and Diablo’s interest faded. And honestly, Diablo hoped he wouldn’t need to experience that kind of bland disappointment in this world too.
†
Noah spread out the cloth.
“Magical energy, sufficient! Magical Tool: Cloth Gate... Open!”
Diablo’s heart danced for a moment. The sheer theatrical nature of the cloth’s activation was so fantastic in appearance that Diablo couldn’t help but get excited. The Palace Knights didn’t show any surprise, though. This clearly wasn’t their first time seeing this, so Diablo tried not to let his excitement show on his face.
“Enter!” Noah called out.
The Palace Knights raised their voices in a battle cry at her order.
“Let’s gooooooo!” Alan the Hero led the pack.
He was a silver-haired Dwarf with an aggressive attitude who excelled in single combat. Perfect for a vanguard. Thanatos the Elf fencer followed after him. The group’s leader, Maximum Abrams, remained at Noah’s side, prepared to defend her in any situation. The other members hurried inside.
—I think it’s my first time having to wait my turn to invade a place.
“Rem and Shera might have come to see us off,” Klem told him.
Diablo was silent. If he looked back, perhaps he’d see them there. The others could have come too. Rose, Lumachina, Horn, Sylvie... Maybe he could spare one last look.
But Diablo shook his head, as if to banish that thought. He couldn’t find the words to respond to Klem.
—I can’t get used to this.
At least whenever he acted out the role of a proud Demon Lord, he’d never been at a loss for words like this. But now he was Noah’s subordinate, so it felt like acting all high and mighty was absurd. And he was so socially inept that the moment he even started wondering about tact, he was done for. If he were to act like his true self, all he’d do was stammer and stutter. And he couldn’t let his friends see him like this.
So Diablo didn’t turn around.
“Seeing off, needless? Needless!” Edelgard the Fallen said with her particular manner of speech, standing next to Klem. “Emperor, defeat! For sure! Sooo, back soon!”
“That’s right!” Klem nodded with a grin. “We’ll be back soon and have lots of biscuits!”
—Even if we drive away the Imperial army, I doubt there are any bakeries that could still bake biscuits in the capital’s ruins...
“And that apple tart too!” Klem pumped her fist into the air.
Such a fancy sweet didn’t exist in Lyferia. But Noah, being an outsider, introduced it to this world. The very same Noah who was now urging them to go ahead.
“Don’t dawdle!” she called out to them.
—It’s the first time I’ve walked into a battlefield with that kind of thing said to me.
Diablo sprinted after the Palace Knights and crossed the Cloth Gate. Klem and Edelgard followed suit behind him. He could hear the sound of the wind around him change, and when he opened his eyes on the other side, a different sight spread out before him. He could hear the sound of weapons clashing.
The time for leisurely conversation had come to an end.
†
Sitting in her office in the Inner Sanctum, Lumachina received a report.
“Prime Minister Noah has led the Palace Knights into the Magimatic Castle Viovix!” the Paladin Tria said with a salute.
Lumachina nodded and turned her gaze to the people gathered in the room, eventually settling it on Rem and Shera.
“Are you sure you shouldn’t have gone to see them?” she asked.
“If Diablo had wanted us to, we would have,” Rem said with a serious voice. “But we can’t get in the way of his concentration. I trust him to come back safely.”
“I wanted to hug him before he left, but Rem said not to!” Shera whined.
“We shouldn’t do anything unnecessary before a major battle,” Rem said tersely.
“Won’t he get lonely?”
“He won’t.”
They’d been bickering like this the whole time. And since Rem and Shera wouldn’t see him, the rest abstained from doing so too. Rose’s expressionless face somehow made her annoyance clear.
“I surely would have accompanied him had my Magimatic Sol not been damaged,” she said bitterly.
“I mean, if I were thirty years younger,” Sylvie shrugged.
“Me?!” Horn squealed, seemingly talking to some figure in her head. “I’d just hold them back if I went! Use the Holy Grail...? What, no, no, no way!”
She was acting cheerful, but maybe she was under some kind of severe stress... Lumachina couldn’t help but feel concerned about her.
Of course, Horn was actually talking to Babalon, goddess of the Holy Grail. But since Babalon was a goddess from another world, no one but the owner of the Grail — Horn in this case — could see her.
“We can’t assume they’ll come back safe and sound from a battle like this,” Lumachina said, rising from her chair. “We should begin preparations for aid and healing.”
“Understood, Your Grace,” Tria said with a deep bow.
The other believers all began to move in accordance with her words.
“Shera, we should be prepared to fight too, in case something happens,” Rem nodded.
“Fight what?” Shera asked her.
“I don’t know. But protecting the people is an Adventurer’s job,” Rem said resolutely.
Rem’s firm words seemed to have filled Shera’s heart with excitement. She clenched her fists.
“Yeah! Let’s help!”